


the strings of fate (the secrets we keep)

by arashianelf



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arashianelf/pseuds/arashianelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outsiders!POV on Arashi, with a little fantasy twist to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the strings of fate (the secrets we keep)

**Author's Note:**

> For 5x15! Comments and criticism are greatly appreciated! Gratituous use of names from the very first anime I watched when I was younger, Shugo Chara :)

At first, Nadeshiko thinks she's hallucinating. But when Nagihiko leans over and whisper-asks if she saw what he thinks they saw she knows that she's not hallucinating. After that, they see it all the time. After a few pointed questions they realise that they're probably the only ones that can see them.

When they're old enough to use a computer unsupervised the first thing they search up is what they've been seeing all their lives. The red string of fate, is what the Internet tells them. As they lay in their beds, the room dark, they talk in hushed voices about it.

People call it, them, the red string of fate from an old Chinese belief, but it's not what they see at all. What they see are a bunch of different coloured lines, connecting people to people. They decide to change the name to the coloured strings of fate.

When they reach their eighteenth birthday, they think they've classified all the colours there is.

Blood red, for familial love.

Bright red for love between married and the occasional dating couples.

Orange red, for crushes and couples that could possibly bloom into something more.

Orange, for best friends.

Orange yellow, for close friends.

Yellow for friends.

Pale yellow for acquaintances.

Then there's the other colors.

Green for jealousy.

Blue for sadness

Purple for anger.

Black for hate.

Brown for dislike.

Pink for happiness and contentedness.

The darker the colour, the deeper the emotion. When they see a line of gold and/or silver, they're happy. It's rare, but gold or silver lines means that they're meant to be. They like to occasionally parse through thick bundles of threads connecting people, like their parents, or their cousins.

They sometimes don't like what they see, but they pull through. It's part of the secrets that they keep close to their hearts. Maybe it's their twin connection, or maybe it's due to this unique power they had, but they know what the other is thinking about almost all the time. It has its pros and cons.

One day when they're out with their parents, they notice a group of five walking along the streets in front of them. They would look like normal everyday passers-by, if it weren't for the intricate web of strings that connected them to each other. Normally, a web this intricate would only be seen between a couple who had been together for a very long time, but to be seen between five people... it was something they had never come across before. It was interesting.

It took them a while to realise who they were. The strings couldn't be seen through television, which was how they normally recognised people they didn't immediately remember. They followed the quintet with their eyes, asking for permission to go off on their own from their parents.

After promising their parents to keep their phones on at all times (they were always together, but you never knew what could happen) and meet their parents at the convenience store entrance in a few hours, they were allowed to go off.

(Their parents hardly worried about them. They had each other and would look for help if necessary.)

Trading glances, they followed the quintet as they entered a ramen shop. Eyes brightening, they turned to each other at the same time and took out their wallets. "Split the bill?" Nagihiko askes after they checked their wallets. Nadeshiko nodded.

They then rushed for the entrance together, fighting to get in first and order. They nudged each other out of the way until they reached the counter, where they turned to each other and said, "Janken pon!" at the same time. Nadeshiko won and ordered for the both of them, as Nagihiko pouted.

The shop's customers, including the quintet, looked on amusedly. Nagihiko scanned the shop quickly, picking a table that had a good view of the quintet so that they could pick apart their intricate web of strings. As they waited for their ramen, they started picking out strings, sorting them out by colour.

They took a break to eat when their food came, knowing from years of practice that the strings would remain how they'd sorted them - no one else could see or touch them, anyway. The one and only time they tried to disconnect a string between two people, they'd thought that they'd did good, but the string returned the next day in an even darker hue. The relationship between those two soured, and the twins knew not to disconnect anyone's strings ever again.

Some strings trailed off into the distance, where the person the string was connected to was far away. They've seen strings break when couples break up, or change colour into another colour as their feelings for each other changed, though that had only happened once before.

Strings never changed colours once they connected two people together. If one’s emotions became stronger or lighter, a string with the correct hue would just weave its way into the threads that connected the two together. The twins had also noticed that they couldn't see their own strings, whether it was Nadeshiko or Nagihiko.

They chatted in a code that would seem to be normal conversation to anyone that was listening, but were actually discussing the web of strings that they were untangling. What they surmised from the strings surprised them, yet at the same time didn't.

Before the group left, Nadeshiko and Nagihiko approached them - why not get an autograph when you see your idols on the streets? - and talked to them for a while, the quintet commenting on how they looked like carbon copies of each other, looking unsurprised when they were told that the two of them were twins.

After signing a piece of paper, the quintet thanked them and left. Nadeshiko took the paper and made a mental note to take it to the convenience store to photocopy it and save the original for safekeeping, to which Nagihiko agreed. They would talk about what they had parsed from that untangled web of strings later, as they always did, at night, in the darkness of their room.

That night, they slowly wrote down all that they had taken note of in a small notebook that they kept in a drawer. Nadeshiko wrote down the date and the number of people the web of strings were connected to, putting in brackets their group name. The numerous different-coloured strings told them a lot about the group.

There were strings of every colour they had seen, but the ones that trailed off into the distance and weren't connected amongst the group themselves were the noticeable ones. There were a few grey, blue and black ones that trailed away, but the ones connected between all five members were the ones that most intrigued them.

There were of course, the expected yellow strings. There were the different shades of yellow from pale to orange yellow, showing their development in their relationships. (The ones that looked thinner were the ones that had been there longer.) Then there was the orange string. However, what surprised them were the two red strings that threaded their way through.

The blood red string, for familial love, was expected, yet unexpected, for they didn’t think that the closeness that was portrayed on television would be real. The bright red string though, was the one that surprised them the most. What it suggested about their relationship was what could potentially become a media disaster if anyone found out. Not that they were going to tell anyone. It was another secret they were keeping.

Then there were the ‘emotion’ strings, as the twins liked to call them, after the ‘relationship’ strings.

There were a few thin threads of green, signifying the old jealousy that the quintet must have had felt amongst them the first few years they’d debuted. There were blue strings in the faintest hue, and it pleased Nadeshiko greatly to see that her idols were happy.

There were purple strings that trailed off into the distance, and a few that threaded their way through the already tangled web of strings. They signified the occasional anger that the members had towards each other. There were strings with the lightest hue of brown, but the twins paid no attention to those.

This was because the pink strings overwhelmed them. The dark hue of pink, so dark the strings were almost red, signified how happy they were to be together. However, what surprised them the most were the gold and silver strings that were clearly visible in the intricate web of strings. They were meant for each other, all five of them. They belonged together.

Nadeshiko and Nagihiko stopped in their recounting and trading of observations. Nagihiko’s voice was tinged with awe as he spoke, “We’ve never seen such a pretty web of strings, have we, Shii-chan?”

Nadeshiko shook her head mutely. The quintet looked so tired sometimes that the fans wondered if they were unhappy, but Nadeshiko now knew that even though they were exhausted, they were happy. (Nagihiko was a fan too, but adamantly refused to admit it.)

They closed the notebook where all their observations were written and climbed into bed, wishing each other good night. The secrets that they kept were many, but they would gladly keep quiet about them if they were worth it.

(They definitely were worth it. All of their secrets were worth guarding.)  



End file.
